Need to Know…

Pop Quiz

What political flamethrower said: “As long as it is supported by Democratic politicians and by liberal Hollywood players, censorship is a useful tool to stifle dissent.”?

What journalist said: “REVOLUTION, n. A bursting of the boilers which usually takes place when the safety valve of public discussion is closed.”?

What noted philosopher observed: “But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the exiting generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”?

What President said: “In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution reading in part, “freedom of information is a fundamental human right, and the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.” This is our touchstone as well. This is the code of the Voice of America. We welcome the view of others. We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”?

What great American writer said: “Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.”?

Answers at the end of the post.

George Bernard Shaw said: “The ultimate form of censorship is assassination.” How then do we deal with the assassination of dissent?

Censorship in the modern era is exercised in ways that are far less inflammatory than the book burnings that symbolized Nazi Germany. We have two powerful institutions that use more insidious methods of silencing thoughts, ideas and dissenting opinions. The cable news networks censor subtly by slanting what they report based on their political bias. More importantly they engage in censorship by refusing to cover “news” that they wish had never happened. It is not just what they report but what they choose not to report that constitutes malfeasance. The second censorious institution is the electronic media, aka the Ministry of Truth (Facebook, YouTube and Twitter), which exercise censorship by silencing individuals with whom they disagree who dare to use their “public” platforms. The decision to censor is made by individuals who are deathly afraid of ideas or opinions with which they disagree or don’t understand…an acute form of narrow mindedness.

The newspapers and magazines that were the town criers of local, national and world events for a century have been marginalized by the electronic media and cable news networks. Cable news is Joseph Goebbel’s wet dream. Twenty-four hour coverage allows the propagation of daily talking points through endless uncritical repetition. For example we now know that the entire Trump/Putin collusion argument in 2016 was a fabrication of the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration. The Steele dossier has been exposed as a work of fiction worthy of Stephen Spielberg. Yet throughout the entire 2016 election cycle most of the cable news networks were, to use an emetic cliche, in bed with Hilliary Clinton. To date they have never corrected the record, letting the “misinformation” they endlessly reported stand. That Fox News did not join this Freak Chorus drove the left crazy: Brianna Keilar of CNN said: “Misinformation is a virus unto itself. And Fox News is the vector.”

Polls have suggested that if the left wing networks and the MOT had not suppressed the Hunter Biden computer story Biden might well have lost the election. They defended their censorship by accepting, uncritically, the argument made by candidate Biden that 50 intelligence officials had reached the conclusion that the laptop was a Russian disinformation campaign. There was no curiosity as to who those officials were or why they reached that conclusion. Then Adams Schiff for brains reflexively stated with absolute certitude that it was a Russian plot. This confirmed that his entire world is one long acid flashback to the 1960’s. Historic note: If the Northern newspapers had failed to report the fall of Atlanta to Sherman on September 2, 1864, Lincoln would likely have been defeated in his bid for re-election by George McClellan, a Democrat who intended to end the war and leave the Confederacy and slavery in place. Happily there was no censorship regarding Sherman’s victory.

It should be noted that the Hunter Biden computer was very real as demonstrated in a great book entitled Laptop from Hell by Miranda Devine.

The Ministry of Truth (MOT) was an echo chamber for the Russia collusion narrative. To suggest that Trump was not Putin’s sock puppet was to suffer instant banishment to an electronic Gulag. Even today the Keystone Cops at the MOT and their blindingly incompetent fact checkers allow the truth challenged to perpetuate the falsehood. This is, sadly, a common practice. If you question the fraud that is “climate crisis” you will be suspended by Twitter. If you challenge the anti-intellectual poppycock that is Critical Race Theory Facebook will put you in the penalty box. (Recommended reading: Race Crazy by Charles Love) A YouTube discussing the irrefutable fact that The Wuhan red death originated in, well, Wuhan China at the Wuhan Institute of Virology will disappear quicker than absentee ballots after an election. Numerous renowned members of the medical community have suffered accordingly. (Recommended reading: A Plague Upon Our House by Dr. Scott Atlas (a real medical doctor in contradistinction to “doctor” Jill Biden) and The Real Anthony Fauci by Robert Kennedy Jr.)

The latest outrage in censorship, cancellation and misinformation is the 2020 election. Recently the intellectually challenged governor of the state of Washington, Jay Inslee, introduced legislation making it a crime to question the integrity of any election. Clearly this idiot is unacquainted with the US Constitution. However, it is the logical outcome of the present hysteria about the election and the January 6 protest.

It has been noted on this site that there is a substantial body of evidence indicating that there was significant voter fraud in the 2020 election. FDR said: “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.” An informed electorate is essential for the health of our Republic. Unfortunately the Democrat Party prefers a misinformed electorate. Our present Attorney General, who is completely out of his depth, has attempted to block any investigation of the fraud claims which are being pursued in several states. The talking point is that election fraud quite simply does not happen and therefore such claims of voting irregularities are seditious and threaten the very roots of our Constitution. A wonderful book entitled Who’s Counting? by John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky documents the long history of voter fraud in the US. You will be shocked to learn that over the last century the Democrat Party has been the most successful practitioner of fraudulent voting. The poster child is none other than “Landslide” Lyndon Johnson whole stole a Senate election in 1948, thus igniting his career of political destruction.

The events of January 6, 2021 are an aphrodisiac for the leftists of America. To be clear any person who committed a violent crime at the Capitol on that date should be prosecuted even in New York City. However to call it an “insurrection” or to compare it to Pearl Harbor as our Vice-Idiot did recently is to engage in ahistorical hyperbole. No conclusion about the protest should be reached until all the facts are on the table.

With the enthusiastic support of the MOT and the left wing cable news lickspittles the truth is being hidden and efforts to reach the truth are being censored. Why if it was an insurrection has not one person been charged with insurrection, which is a crime? Why is the Federal government refusing to make available some 14,000 hours of video from the Capitol that day? Why doesn’t the deep state answer the question as to whether there were agents provocateurs from the FBI or CIA in the crowd on January 6? This might prove interesting because the plan to kidnap the governor of the formerly great state of Michigan turns out to have been an operation originating with undercover FBI agents. Why hasn’t Ray Epps, who is seen and heard on videos encouraging the assembled protestors to “breach the Capitol itself”, been arrested and charged? If January 6 was an insurrection why haven’t the CHOP/CHAZ insurrectionists, who actually engaged in a “violent uprising against an authority or government” in Seattle in 2020, been arrested? Why are individuals who are charged only with trespass being held without bail in the District of Columbia jail under the control of a anti-Trump zealot? Why are these questions not being asked by cable news or the MOT?

Over the course of 2020 we were treated to violent “insurrections” from coast to coast brought to us by the left wing shock troops of Fa-Antifa and (Some) Black Lives Matter. They were portrayed by the leftist cable networks as “mostly peaceful”, by reporters standing in front of a building in full conflagration. Had CNN existed on December 7, 1941 the attack might have been described as “mostly peaceful.” The violence, destruction and attacks on the police were excused because the riots and looting were portrayed as a response to the oppression that the street felons and thugs had been forced to endure since 1619. So let’s analyze what might have been done to trigger the January 6 protest at the Capitol.

For five years the President Donald Trump and his supporters had been subjected to slanders, misrepresentations and outright lies. His accomplishments were never reported on cable news (other than Fox) and his voters routinely described as deplorables, racists, white supremacists and Nazis. In addition it was clear to anyone with a functioning brain that the election of 2020 had been rife with fraud. The protestors believed that Trump had won the election and it was stolen by the Democrats. However they were told that to question the election was to engage in sedition, the spread of disinformation and the destruction of democracy. The amnesiacs at CNN and MSDNC could not remember that Hilliary Clinton called Trump an illegitimate President and argued that he “won” only with the assistance of Putin. The protestors may have seen their grievances as legitimate and, like Fa-Antifa and SBLM, that they were justified in protesting the election on Capitol Hill, in the people’s legislature.

Why do the cable news shills and Democrats continue to call the protest an “armed insurrection” when there is no evidence anyone was armed? Why to they keep telling us that five people died during the protest when there was only one death…an unarmed military veteran who was shot by a Capitol policeman? Why don’t they explain why the Capitol police opened the doors to the protestors who wandered around the building with little evidence of vandalism? Why are we not allowed to see the “destruction” that ensued?

So on January 6, 2022, the Democrats, the leftist news networks and denizens of the deep state engaged in an orgy of self-pity, fear-mongering and tin foil hat conspiracy theory. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has been vocal about the election fraud and it has earned her a permanent ban by the MOT. At the same time Georgia Secretary of State Raffensperger has asked the Department of Justice to investigate elections in Fulton County (Atlanta) following a number of allegations of voting irregularities. It is unlikely that Merrick Garland will do anything because he is actively trying to undercut all such investigations. Wouldn’t you think that, based on their oft-stated confidence in the process, they would leap at the chance to prove Trump is wrong? Vegas odds: 1,200,250 to 1 against DOJ action.

Why do the MOT and leftist cable news fabulists ignore the murder of young Black men across the country? In 2020 9,913 Black males were killed in the US. That number is surely higher for 2021 yet only 113 Black men were killed by police last year. 797 Blacks were killed in Chicago alone in 2021. From SBLM we get…crickets! The number of American Blacks killed in each of the last three years was higher than the total number of Black soldiers killed in the Viet Nam War…LBJ’s testosterone rush.

H.L. Mencken, anticipating the election of Joe Biden said: “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Word on the street is that Nanny Pelosi will retire as it is becoming clearer that a red wave is in the offing this year. She has already purchased a $25 million bungalow in Florida (interesting choice after she has trashed DeSantis for several years). However, it is unlikely that anyone will entrap her into getting her hair done without a mask there being no mask requirements in Florida. Let freedom ring! Will she, in a departing gesture, rip up Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech this year?

Bonus pop quiz question:

Who said: “Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.”?

Answers to pop quiz:

What political flamethrower said: “As long as it is supported by Democratic politicians and by liberal Hollywood players, censorship is a useful tool to stifle dissent.”? Andrew Breitbart

What journalist said: “REVOLUTION, n. A bursting of the boilers which usually takes place when the safety valve of public discussion is closed.”? Ambrose Bierce

What noted philosopher observed: “But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the exiting generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”? John Stuart Mill

What President said: “In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution reading in part, “freedom of information is a fundamental human right, and the touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated.” This is our touchstone as well. This is the code of the Voice of America. We welcome the view of others. We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”? John F. Kennedy

What great American writer said: “Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the last resort of the boob and the bigot.”? Eugene O’Neill

Bonus question: Albert Einstein